Wanting to do something meaningful as she battled severe depression, Manning, a clinical psychologist acclaimed for her personal account (Undercurrents) of this debilitating illness, volunteered to provide Christmas presents for a needy family in a homeless shelter. She hoped to do this without actually meeting the family, but when she had to deliver the gifts in person to a young, single, black mother named Raina, she found herself drawn to the woman and her children, a two-year-old daughter and two-month-old twin sons. At first, Manning felt awkward and embarrassed, but Raina proved to be witty and supremely self-confident, not at all intimidated by a middle-class white woman "doing good." Soon she and her children became a second family for Manning, whose only child, a 19-year-old daughter, was away at college; fortunately, Manning's husband was as happy with this new family as was his wife. When one of the twins developed an incurable cancer, the author spent many days in the hospital as he underwent treatment, and she describes vividly the agonizing months leading up to the child's death. As a lapsed Catholic, Manning had to learn to accept Raina's evangelical Christian beliefs, something she found difficult, especially when Raina maintained that prayer and a miracle could save her child's life. At times, Manning's account of a single woman struggling to make ends meet is reminiscent of Barbara Ehrenreich's exploration of the trials of the working poor, Nickel and Dimed, but there are other dimensions to this engaging book, a heartrending account of a satisfying personal relationship that helped the author heal herself while helping someone else. National print advertising and author tour. (July)
